Catherine Clover’s audiovisual installation practice uses field recording, digital imaging and text to explore the human–animal relationship in the urban environment. Her work focuses on the public’s ambiguous relationship with common noisy wild urban birds through a framework of everyday experience. Ideas about communication among species and across species are addressed through the prism of voice and language and the interplay between hearing and listening: the vocal and the spoken; seeing and reading.
B is for Bird, C is for City took place in the Norla Dome at the Mission to Seafarers, Melbourne. Like in whispering galleries in cathedrals, the circular shape of this building with its domed ceiling created extraordinary acoustic effects. To engage with these acoustics, field recordings were played in mono, through just one speaker, strategically placed so that the acoustics of the domed roof (rather than the audio technology) caused the sound to spread throughout the space, generating an immersive and experiential effect.
Site-specific field recordings that captured the seagulls’ voices contrasted with the voices of three performers. The performers—Kate Hunter, Vanessa Chapple and Penny Baron—read from bird field guides and imitated the gulls’ voices, echoing some of the content in the field recordings in something not unlike a process of call and response. The performers activated the space by moving through it, inhabiting it, calling to each other, reading to each other, responding to audience noise, and listening. Their movements highlighted the acoustics of the space.
Written transcriptions of gulls’ calls and songs were projected onto the lower part of the dome. The transcriptions were taken from the field recordings and used the phonetic words that naturalists identify in field guides, such as “keow,” “kaaar,” “yah,” “yow” and “whee.” We use some of these same non-semantic words in our everyday speech, and this similarity was playfully emphasized with words such as “ow,” “oh,” “mm.” The words were projected onto the dome using the analogue technology of an overhead projector. Images of Australian and American urban landscapes from the early to mid twentieth century were projected at ground level using a 35mm slide projector. The slides portrayed a rather bleak vision of the urban environment and no bird appeared in any of the images. The sounds of these technologies were distinct: the overhead projector had a subtle breathy hum, and the slide projector made a triple clacking sound each time a slide changed.
Silence was an important component of the performance and was intended to draw attention to the intrinsic qualities of the building itself as well as to the gulls living outside who were audible at times during the performance. At one stage the three performers stopped to listen at the ventilation shafts. These shafts captured external sounds and directed them into the space, however they were only audible if the internal environment was quiet. The audience watched as the performers stopped for some minutes. Their stillness and silence prompted the audience to follow suit. The sound of the building’s movements became audible, as did external sound filtering in, which was a mixture of the gulls’ calls and songs as they settled for the night, as well as the sound of muted traffic heading in and out of the city. This extended moment underlined the environmental thrust of the performance and the festival as a whole, that of the role of thoughtful listening when considering the urban world around us. Listening is an important sense with which to perceive our surroundings, even in cities dominated by loud, pervasive sounds and noises.
AIMS
Sustainability
B is for Bird, C is for City was intended to be a low-tech, one-off event. By taking place in a public site rather than a gallery, the work reached a broader audience. As an arts space, the Dome in which B is for Bird, C is for City took place has great potential for visual arts, performance and music. The Mission is eager to get the arts community involved in the space, both for financial benefit but also to secure a stronger foothold in resisting the commercial development of the Docklands area. The performance helped to bring attention to an extraordinary architectural and historical space in central Melbourne, its ongoing role in the support of those who work at sea, as well as the Mission’s financial plight in the face of ongoing commercial development.
The site is accessible to the public, but not many people are familiar with it. It is both an historical http://laparkan.com/buy-tadalafil/ (heritage) site as well as a fully functioning resource for seafarers. Increasing awareness of the role of the Mission was one of the aims of the project. The Mission has provided support for seafarers in Melbourne since 1915. While there are far fewer seafarers than in the past and they stay only 24–48 hours (compared to one to two weeks prior to containerisation), 95 per cent of Australia’s goods are still transported by sea.
One of the environmental contexts in which the work operated was that of Acoustic Ecology. The World Forum for Acoustic Ecology defines this field as the process of “listening to the soundscape, sharpening aural awareness and deepening listeners’ understanding of environmental sounds and their meanings.”
The performance was intended to address our ambiguous relationship with the wild animals that share our urban world, specifically the silver gull, which is the native gull of Australia. Gulls are increasingly evident in cities across the world and their close proximity means that they are increasingly unwelcome.
Methods of Evaluation
The Mission staff were welcoming and easy to work with. They were intrigued by the project and highly supportive. Entry to the performance was free and no bookings were required. About 60 people attended the event. Full documentation of the event was made by video, stills and audio.
Comments from members of the audience in the form of email feedback and discussion showed that on leaving the building, audience members were more sensitive to and aurally aware of the birds they encountered on their way home. Thus an understanding of sharing the urban environment with other creatures, rather than dominating the urban environment, seemed to have been initiated. One visitor commented that hearing a bird call outside her window the next morning seemed to echo, extend and complete her performance experience. Few audience members had ever been inside the Mission before, although almost all knew it by sight because of its distinct ‘arts and crafts movement’ architecture. A number of audience members specified their interest in seeing inside the building as motivating their attending the event.
PROJECT DELIVERY
The focus of the Liquid Architecture festival is sound and listening. The theme of Liquid Architecture for 2013 was Sonic City—Sounds of the Urban World. The festival sourced unusual sites around Melbourne to which each invited artist could respond creatively. The intention was to bring audiences into normally inaccessible or unfamiliar spaces and to encourage them to listen to those spaces.
For B is for Bird, C is for City, the technological requirements were minimal. Technology was hired from RMIT University and comprised two analogue projectors (35mm and overhead), 70x35mm slides (sourced from RMIT’s library), one speaker and four lights. Six texts were printed on acetate on a domestic ink jet printer. The single speaker used the natural acoustics of the space to create an immersive sonic environment. The field recordings were played from the artist’s laptop through Adobe Audition. Four dimmer lights lit the back wall behind the audience with the projectors providing a low light for the performance. The performers worked acoustically (rather than being amplified) and used individual book-reading lights.
The willingness and interest of the Mission to Seafarers organisation had an impact on the choice of the site. The fact that this project was site specific was a deciding factor, as it would draw attention to the building and its surroundings and uses.
Constraints on the project included the building’s listing as a heritage site, which limits use of the floor and walls. The artist was fully informed about all requirements and expectations of the Mission prior to the project’s development and this limitation was negotiated to have negligible impact on the project. As the project was site specific it was always compliant to the requirements of the building. The building was a key component of the performance, almost a character in its own right.
IMPACTS OF ARTWORK PRODUCTION
The equipment was hired from RMIT University. The low-tech nature of the project enabled short gear loading times, as well as minimum transportation of materials and equipment. The central location of the site and the scarcity of car parking meant that most audience members travelled by public transport to the event.
SOURCES
‘When L is for Listening.’ Review of the performance by Evelyn Tsitas, http://ecocriticalconnections.wordpress.com/2013/09/15/when-l-is-for-listening-catherine-clovers-b-is-for-bird-c-is-for-city/
Catherine Clover, http://ciclover.com/main.html
Liquid Architecture, http://www.liquidarchitecture.org.au
Liquid Architecture: B is for Bird, C is for City, http://www.liquidarchitecture.org.au/b-is-for-bird-c-is-for-city/
Liquid Architecture: Curatorial Essay, http://www.liquidarchitecture.org.au/sonic-city-essay/
Australian Music Centre – Liquid Architecture 14: Sonic City, http://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/event/liquid-architecture-14-sonic-city
Radio National: report by Camilla Hannan. ‘The Sonic City,’ http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/soundslikeradio/sonic-city/5351976